First Listen (Finally!): Radiohead – In Rainbows

Looking for news you can trust?Subscribe to our free newsletters.

Okay, after much ado, your intrepid reporter with the silly DJ name was able to download the new Radiohead album In Rainbows (for which I paid £5), and my first reaction is it’s worth the trouble. The title at first put me off a little; its girlish cutesiness (will the next CD be called With Unicorns?) seemed to combine with the whole “almost-free mp3” thing to give the album an air of disposability. Was it all going to sound like homemade blog-house?

Perhaps this image was intended as contrast, since the music itself is more organic and, well, rock than the band has been in a while, a 180-degree turn from Kid A, the band’s most electronic release. Even “All I Need,” which nods to downtempo experimenters Boards of Canada in its synth-y bassline, turns out to be almost a traditional love song, with live-sounding drums and piano as well as a soulful side to Thom Yorke’s vocals we haven’t really heard before. “Soulful” is, in fact, the operative word here; there’s the Motown-style reverb and falsetto crooning on “Reckoner,” and the Beck-like acoustic number “Faust Arp.”

Not that it’s anything but Radiohead. I’ve always said the band sounds like they’re making music to be sent into space as an artifact of a dying-off human race, and the usual bleak majesty and immense mournfulness haven’t gone anywhere. But when the three-chord pattern from Paul McCartney & Wings’ “Silly Love Songs” pops up, you know this isn’t “Idioteque.” It may even grab some new fans who found the band’s screaming intensity rattling: play your anti-Radiohead friends “House of Cards,” a sweet, quiet ballad, with Yorke singing, plainly: “I don’t wanna be your friend/I just wanna be your lover.” Fine, let’s put on In Rainbows and make out.

FACT:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and the wealthy wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2019 demands.